Thursday, March 29, 2012

This week's guest blogger is Brian Marsony. Brian Morsony is an NSF postdoctoral fellow at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include theoretical and
computational modeling of AGN jets and gamma-ray bursts.

Gender Roles and Infant/Toddler Care: Male and Female Professors on the Tenure Track

I would like to call attention to a recently published study comparing
the roles of men and women in caring for young children (Rhodes &
Rhodes, 2012). The study is a survey of male and female tenure-track
college professors with children under age 2 at universities with
parental leave available. The full article, from the Journal of
Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology is available
here.
And a press release from the University of Virginia (lead author's
home institution) is
here.

The study found that even with parents who thought child care should
be split equally, fathers of young children almost never did half of
the infant care. This was true even for men who took parental leave
and for women who did not. Women were much more likely to take leave,
with 69% of women taking leave compared to just 12% of men. Women also
reported enjoying infant care activities more than men, one possible
reason why women preform more of these tasks.

The first author also claims in the press release that "Male
professors who take paid leave tend to use a majority of their time on
things other than infant care, such as advancing their publishing
agendas". However, there appears to be no evidence in the published
article to support this, other than an anecdotal statement.

The results and conclusions should be taken with a massive grain of
salt. There are the usual problems of sociological studies, with the
data being self-reported rather than objectively measured, small
sample sizes (only 11 men surveyed took leave), and the data being
collected in 2001-2002, so it is already a decade out of date. The
survey also ask how often the survey takers do specific tasks relative
to their spouse, not how much time they each spend on different
activities.

But beyond this, there is also the problem that these authors see any
difference between men and women, particularly about the "stickiness
of gender roles" to be due to evolutionary or biological differences
between men and women, rather than due to differences in cultural or
societal expectations or conditioning. The first author, for example,
said in 2005 that (from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, direct quote from
Rhoads in single quotes) "Rhoads agrees with Summers, noting that
though women are better at math calculation, men 'by their nature' are
better at math reasoning or higher math -- why most astronomers and
physicists are men, he says."
(from here)

The main conclusion the authors draw, which I do not agree with, is
that parental leave for men is harmful to the careers of women, and
should be eliminated. In other words, since fathers are more likely
to neglect their children, paternity leave should be eliminated, thus
forcing men to neglect their children. The authors also seem
surprised that "Some assistant professors were taking leave even
though their wives didn’t have jobs" (because men couldn't possibly
want to be around their children or help care for them unless their
wife is working?). There also seems to be a belief that the primary
reason women need maternity leave is for breastfeeding (so presumably
leave is not necessary when adopting an infant?). These conclusion
are not supported by the data in the article. Furthermore, just
because a single policy fails to immediately achieve gender equality
does not mean that policy should be eliminated.

Although the data in this paper is very valuable and certainly worth
looking at, read critically when looking at the interpretation of that
data.

Hey Brian. Thanks for this post. I have heard many stories (directly from the men themselves, but haven't seen any actual studies) of how great paternity leave was as they got so much done (e.g. submitted a paper, proposal, etc.). I've never heard a women on maternity leave say that. One way that Rice University is dealing with this particular discrepancy, is to make the men who want to take paternity leave to sign affidavits stating that they will be the primary care giver to the new baby during those weeks. Interesting idea. I wonder if it works.

For several years as department head I've required all parents taking parental leave to sign such an affidavit. Several of the men have clearly honored their commitment, even in one case bringing an infant to an on-campus meeting with a visiting committee. (The baby asleep in a sling charmed the committee.) Visible respect for parental leave by these men helps shape a climate of broader respect for work-life balance. It may not be 100% effective but I think it's much better than no affidavit or a gender-discriminatory policy.

Wow, thanks for sharing that. The data raise some interesting questions, but the conclusions don't seem to actually follow from them. Indeed, I wonder how many women would prefer that, if their spouses can't do at least 50% of the childcare, then instead they do none at all and get back to work.

In a day and age when only a small fraction of men actually take advantage of such family-friendly policies (according to many studies, even this one), it seems to me that we need ways of encouraging them instead of discouraging.